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Last Updated July 5, 2018

Telephone Pioneers Amateur Radio Club

BC Digital Emergency Services Network

Welcome to the Telephone Pioneers Amateur Radio Club!

TPARC operates and maintains a HF/VHF/UHF ROSE switched packet amateur radio
network in British Columbia that extends from the capital city of Victoria,
through the Lower Mainland, up into the interior to Kamloops, and over to the
North Okanagan at Vernon.

In the Lower Mainland, TPARC also operates a VHF and UHF linked voice
repeater system on 145.170MHz (-600kHz) and 442.875MHz (+5MHz).

Please see the links at the left for more information.

TPARC is a registered Canadian charity. We accept all monetary donations, as
well as in-kind donations of suitable hardware. Tax receipts will be issued, where
applicable. Contact the TPARC President (see About Us
for contact information) if you wish to make a donation.

Voice Repeaer Changes

2016/08/26

In April of this year, we started re-configuration of our voice repeaters at The Boot.

A number of changes have taken place, and here is where we are at today.

The RLC-Club Deluxe controller has been replaced, we are now running an Allstar/Asterisk
based controller for the repeaters.

A VOTER board and GPS have been interfaced to the ICOM repeater
on VHF to support multi-receiver (voting) operation.

A surplus paging amplifier has been installed on VHF to increase the output power to near 100W.

A remote receiver has been installed at our VE7HNY site and added to the voting mix for VHF.

Another voting receiver (portable) is presently operating from VE7FET's QTH.

A third voting receiver is planned for installation on Bowen Island at Cowan Point.

This should drastically improve the receive coverage for VE7TEL VHF, as well as improve where it is heard too.

You can view the receiver status (RSSI) in real-time by following the links on the Allmon page (above).

These changes now let us better support our users by allowing for remote access to the repeaters using
a PC client, Android device, or iPhone. It also opens up the opportunity to link other repeaters together using
BCWARN/internet connections, similar to how IRLP/EchoLink operates (except we have better control over the linking).

VE7HNY Changes

2016/06/25

Both the VHF and UHF Digipeaters at VE7HNY have been upgraded.

The UHF repeater is back, after a long hiatus.

Both repeaters now incorporate full duplex bit regeneration.

This may require you to increase your TXDELAY.

The repeaters are configured to transparently repeat whatever 1200 baud data they hear, but the
signaly will be demodded/remodded and transmitted at a fixed deviation (regardless of the input
signal's deviation).

This is akin to "the way it used to be" for you old timers that were around
back when the network was young.

In addition, you can call VE7HNY-8 (FPAC) or VE7HNY-10 (WinLink/RMS), and the attached node will
respond to your call. The call is blocking, so the node will wait until the repeater is quiet to
transmit, so it won't walk over anyone repeating through it.

Note that even though we have DCD detect on the receivers, they are running on discriminator audio. This
means that randomly there are enough 1's and 0's in the right order to false the DCD decoder (it isn't that
smart), so you may hear "burps" of random data on the transmitter. It is easier to just run straight DCD than
try and "AND" it with CSQ... it is also faster to detect and transmit.

Frequency change for Mt. Sicker

2015/08/19

***FREQUENCY CHANGE FOR MT. SICKER, VE7TPS-8***

You may or may not know that the original frequency used by the VHF drop at Mt. Sicker was the
uplink frequency used by the ISS (our network existed before ISS was built).

As such, it has been decided to change the drop frequency at Mt. Sicker to move off this channel.

The new frequency is 145.610MHz (simplex as before). This frequency has been co-ordinated with
the other users at Mt. Sicker and poses no intermod risks to anyone.

Please access VE7TPS-8 and VE7TPS-10 in Duncan on 145.610MHz. Please note that there is
NO OFFSET. Double check your radio, as some may automatically apply a -600kHz repeater offset.

1200 Baud Data Repeaters

As many long time TPARC network users will know, we pioneered the 1200 baud "bit regenerating repeater" back in the early 90's.

Over time, the modems used to provide this function have grown old and many have passed their bits on to the bit bucket.

As we go through and refresh the network, these dead regenerators will be replaced. We now have a solution that emulates
using the Bel 202 modem and some audio bridges. In fact, it uses hardware we already had... Pactor Tiny-II TNC's. It turns out
they just needed a couple modifications, and a daughter board built by VE7FET that plugs on the expansion header.

The bit regenerator takes the packets from the receiver on the repeater, runs them through a modem (full duplex) to re-clock the bits,
and sends the "cleaned up" packet to the transmitter. The advantage of doing this is that no matter what the repeater receives (ie deviation
too high or too low from a user), as long as the modem can decode the packets, it will spit them back out at a known deviation to everyone
else listening on the channel.

Note that there is an added delay for the modem (TNC) to decode and re-encode the data, so you may need to increase your TXDELAY
parameter to give it a little more preamble to sync on.

As far as using the regen repeater, it is pretty straight forward. Anything you send to it (remember to use a split just like
you would for a voice repeater) will be repeated on its output (1200 baud packets only). If you want to connect to the node at the repeater site,
you would just call the callsign of the FPAC node or RMS callsign (see the revised instructions for using the network to be posted soon).